Deepthi Welaratna explores media, globalization, and popular culture
Writing
Postmodernity in Howl’s Moving Castle
Both the novel and the film versions of Howl’s Moving Castle transcend genre labels and reside in the uneasy, rugged terrain of postmodernism.
Internationalize Your Website
Translating websites for audiences with different languages and regions is a tricky process. Read on for the complications and the rewards.
Imagining a New State: Image and Activism in Iran
The dynamics of the Iranian election protests signal a shift in collective action and state power structures and raise questions about new models of governance and decision-making.
Cleaning Coal: The Battle to Rebrand Coal
What exactly is “clean coal”? Who’s trying to persuade Americans to invest once more in a long discredited form of energy?
Weights + Measures: A System of Relative Values
Considers how linear animation can evolve into a data-driven exploration of relative measures through database aesthetics, emergence in visual systems, and the unique properties of multi-stream visual storytelling.
IT, National Identity, and Social Cohesion
Reviewing a snapshot of long-range policy goals on information and communication technologies and national identity politics from 2005.
Resistance and Difference across Global Media
Sample syllabus for “Intertextual Representations of Resistance and Difference across Global Media”
No Easy Answers: M.I.A. and the Politics of Pop
In a 2009 interview, M.I.A. called the civil war in Sri Lanka a genocide and compared it to Nazi-Germany. What lies behind M.I.A.’s contentious claim?
Poverty Porn: Reinforcing the Imperialist Gaze
Why the “poverty porn” argument actually reinforces the very imperialist gaze it seeks to undercut.
Mad Men Can Never Be Happy
Why can’t these characters seem to create a normal moment of happiness for themselves?
Natural Fuse at Towards the Sentient City
The project addresses not only power generation and balance, but also embeds a community regulation mechanism.
Millennium Development Goals
UN Week is focusing on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, a set of ambitious but targeted objectives to be achieved by 2015. Learn more.
Primitive in Paris
Visits to the Cité de l’Immigration and the Musée du Quai Branly provides a route to understanding how the role of “primitive” art in France has changed over the past couple of decades.
Globalization in Action: Avaaz
Avaaz has had a deep impact on a variety of social justice issues in just two years of existence.
Paris Mourns Michael Jackson
For a little while longer, there is a new sound added to the hum of Paris – a Michael Jackson soundtrack busting out from bars and clubs, compact cars, and cheap boomboxes.
The Digital Playground/Factory
People used to get paid to do what is now just as much the domain of amateurs who contribute their work for free.
Brutal New York, 1965-1995
This photo series captures the side of life too often ignored by shows like Mad Men.
NYT Edits Comments
The New York Times still believes in the authoritative voice — an attractive idea, but also outdated and dangerous.
Lions Among Us
It was an era of bronzed gods and goddesses, the likes of which had only been hinted at by 21st century Miami.
